I was a big supporter of Android for the longest time, but I realized that while using Android tablets, I was never fully satisfied with what I was doing. After trying so many different tablets and sizes I have finally been able to come to a conclusion as to why I am not satisfied. Android tablets use the wrong aspect ratio for anything other than watching widescreen movies. It’s not only about high resolutions or good color reproduction, its about the aspect ratio. From an unbiased perspective, one could say that for media consumption and for cohesiveness among the screen ecosystem, a widescreen would make sense. This isn’t true for tablets. A computer with a screen of 13 inches or more may benefit from being widescreen as it can fit more in to add to the user’s productivity, but when a screen is 10 inches or less, making it an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 instead of 4:3 makes the screen very thin. This thinness makes pages in portrait too thin and long and pages in landscape annoying to read as I have to keep scrolling constantly. Therefore, if a quality Android tablet comes out with a proper aspect ratio of 4:3 (not Archos or Chinese Branded), I may give it a try. Until then, I will be enjoying my iPad Air…
P.S. Android also needs some serious help with smooth document viewing and native tablet apps.
Photo Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aspect_ratios.png
The Lost Digit 